


magnetic.

by bitterheart



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Chocolate Box Exchange, Gen, Pre-Canon, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 09:08:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17680559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitterheart/pseuds/bitterheart
Summary: They cross paths more often than Holland would like.





	magnetic.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labocat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labocat/gifts).



> Hello, dear recipient! I started out with every intention of making this shippy but it ended up being pre-slash at best. I hope you enjoy it all the same, just as I enjoyed writing it! Thank you for giving me a great excuse to write about these two.

In the dull white halls of _this_ London, Kell stood out like a bloodstain on marble floors. 

He was aware of the attention he drew and carried that knowledge in his posture. His back was straight, his chin tilted up in a way that seemed almost defiant. Almost, as if he already knew that in this place, the balance between too little power and too much was a fragile thing that could tip all too quickly in either direction. 

Holland didn't know how many times Kell had visited, how many times he saw the crown change hands. It was an uncomfortable thought, an outsider watching _his_ world struggle for power time and again, marking the passage of time by the ever-changing face of the king. He sounded far too familiar with this place where he didn't belong, a place he possibly couldn't understand. He was too young to have been visiting for long but the frustrating thing was that he was right in his assessment of the throne. Here, kings didn't stay kings for long. Not unless they had the strength to hold onto their crown, whether it was their own or, like Vortalis, the strength of someone else. 

Holland wasn't a knight any more than he was a murderer but he still remembered the way Kell looked at him, the flicker of understanding that could only come from someone else who knew the depth of magic an _Antari_ held in their veins. With that came a kind of curiosity that Holland refused to reciprocate. Perhaps no one else noticed the insolence in the boy enough to take issue with it, but Holland felt it in the way Kell looked at him, in the lurch he felt in his gut as he met Kell's mismatched gaze, and in the fact that Kell thought the magic in their blood was enough to make them similar. It didn't matter that Kell understood one thing about him. In the grand scale of what set them apart from each other, it was nothing. 

Kell could not understand this city or any single one of its inhabitants, no matter how many times he stepped through its ash and smoke. Not when he could step through a wall and leave this world for one who had bought its comfort at the price of another. _Red London_ , as Holland would come to think of it. Red, like the colour of Kell's coat and hair. Like the coin he left with Holland like a long-lost key. Like the blood that stained the hands of its inhabitants ever since they sealed the doors between worlds. 

Red, like the blood Holland paid for passage days later. He felt something within him come loose as he spoke the words for the first time, pressing his cut palm to the wall with Kell's coin held in between. " _As Travars_." 

He was prepared for the magic to take a toll on him. By now, Holland knew that blood magic often did. Still, he underestimated the sense of wrongness that came from being in a world that wasn't his own. His stomach lurched as it had when he first made eye contact with Kell but it was quickly followed by something else, something that Holland first mistook for nausea until he realised it wasn't. 

It was magic, in abundance. It was in the air, in the red glow that filled this world with the same richness that his own lacked. Since his eye first turned black, Holland had never once hungered for magic. He wanted it for the rest of his world but his own magic always felt adequate. 

Here, magic was so effortless that it was being used without thought, with the expectation that it would simply be there. The anger that burned through Holland felt like the ice of the Sijlt. Even that was different here, the same body of water but a world apart, a glowing source of the magic that threaded itself through this world. 

Just beyond it, a palace designed as a display of grandeur rather than a fortress to fend off attacks. It suited Kell, a place of power that did not know how it truly felt to fight for strength, to fight for life. Holland wanted to bring it crashing down upon itself until there was nothing left of it but rubble. He resisted the urge, turning his gaze from the palace and to the streets of this London. 

Even if he couldn't understand the language around him, he could pick up on the curious tones of those around him. Holland wasn't hiding his black eye and he knew that Kell was the only Antari here. Surely, the citizens of this place knew the same and even if they couldn't see his eye, his faded clothes set him apart. They kept their distance from him all the same, quickly averting their eyes when he looked in their direction. They regarded him with fear and unlike anyone from his home, they saw his power and did not dare to challenge it. 

Holland walked until the smell of magic became too cloying, the same rotten-sweet smell of flowers that came from Kell and clung to the coin he left behind no matter how many days passed. He wanted the magic here, the colour that came with it, the lively bustle of a city that was very much alive. He wanted to take it home, to breathe the same colour and life into the pale London he belonged to. 

Vortalis was sitting in his room, a lit taper between his fingers, when Holland returned. Even the smoke wasn't enough to chase away the lingering smell of flowers, but he said nothing of it. He didn't ask about Holland's trip, or what the other London was like, as if he knew that all he would receive would be the confirmation of another London thriving with life and magic as they watched the slow suffocation of their own.

"Sit," he told Holland, and set up a game of _Ost_. 

Holland welcomed the distraction. He needed the time to disconnect, to process what he'd seen. He wanted some time before he looked at the rest of his London, knowing it would look even paler now that he'd been elsewhere and seen what could be. 

Kell was unwise enough to return a week later. It was luck that spat him out of a wall and in front of Holland rather than Vortalis. The guards around them tensed immediately but remained at their posts with a gesture from Holland.

"You used it," Kell said and even if there was no accusation in his tone, Holland felt his back go rigid, his hands balling into fists at his sides. 

He was expecting word of his brief visit to reach Kell but he was unprepared for the expectation on the boys face, the assumption that they would be distant allies exchanging missives. Visiting each other. The king of Red London was happy to leave this world to its fate with no interest in changing it. There was nothing Kell could offer that Holland would want to accept.

"Go home," Holland told him. "The king will not see you. You're wasting your time playing royal emissary here. This is a land of warriors, not diplomats." 

Kell looked him directly in the eyes, his jaw set against the same wave of discomfort that Holland felt. "I'm not here to see the king." 

Holland exhaled slowly, keeping his irritation out of his expression. "Go home." 

This time, when Kell left, they didn't see each other again for an entire month. When they did, it was in Red London, with Kell looking so smug that Holland couldn't help the way he bristled. 

"Of course I know where you end up, if you come here from the castle in your London," Kell said by way of greeting. "Of course I'd keep an eye on this place." 

Holland couldn't fault him for his strategy. Back home, there were several royal guards with instructions to keep an eye on where Kell went if he was ever to visit again. He was impossible to miss and even if there hadn't been any new sightings since Holland last sent him home, there were people who knew him by his eye, his colour, his magic. He knew the tavern Kell would always walk to, even though he never tried to enter. It made sense for Kell to learn the same things about him.

There was still more to know about Kell. Here, he stood with a slouch. He wore his hair over his black eye, as if hiding it would make people forget it was there. He folded in on himself just slightly, like he could take up less space this way and it was so very different to how he held himself within the halls of Holland's home. 

Kell caught Holland looking, raising an eyebrow in question. Holland had no interest in replying, pulling a coin from his pocket for his passage home, unsheathing a knife to make another cut into his palm.

"Wait," Kell spoke up, as the blade met Holland's skin.

A droplet of red swelled up against Holland's knife as he looked up.

"We're both _Antari_ ," Kell said. "We're both in service to our thrones—"

"And?" Holland asked. That was where their similarities ended and Kell had to know it too. 

Kell didn't want to be alone. Holland didn't know what kind of loneliness had settled into his bones as he lived in his palace, and didn't care. Holland wasn't the solution to whatever problem Kell faced. He had absolutely no interest in changing that. 

"I thought so," Holland finally said, to Kell's silence, and turned to leave. 

The next time they crossed paths, Kell had changed. Holland could see it in his expression, in the way he carried himself. It was there in his magic. There was a solemnity that turned the corners of Kell's mouth downward and Holland recognised the spectre of death when he saw it. 

There was more to it than just a first kill. There was a desperation in his eyes and in the rigid line of his shoulders that spoke of loss, or how close he'd come to it. Kell couldn't be older than fourteen. By his age, Holland was already far too familiar with death and loss both. 

Just by the cuffs of Kell's sleeves, Holland could see the silver of new scars whenever they caught the light. Whatever blood magic Kell had used, it had been desperate. Impatient. That was the problem with Red London. People here thought that magic needed to be urged and bargained with, instead of commanded. 

"How many?" Holland asked, his gaze deliberate until Kell hid his wrists under his sleeves. When Kell didn't answer, Holland clarified, "How many did you kill?"

Kell looked away. "All of them."

Holland thought of his own list, starting with Alox."But how many?" 

"It doesn't matter how many," Kell muttered. "They're dead now."

Turning away with something that almost felt like disappointment, Holland pulled a coin from his pocket to take him home. He made another cut into his palm, raising it to the nearest wall.

"Holland," Kell said, before he could leave. 

Something in his voice made Holland stop, turning around to face him again. Kell was looking at him, brow furrowed.

"Six," he said at length. "There were six of them. If I had to, I would have killed twice as many. Ten times as many."

Immediately, Holland understood exactly what had happened. The blood on Kell's hands wasn't to protect his own life. 

"I'm sure your brother protested even six lives," Holland replied, then added, "if he were to know."

The smile Kell gave him was a wretched one, a shade of the confident slant he had to his mouth when they first met. So even on this side of the door between their worlds, things could change in the blink of an eye. The thought comforted Holland just as much as it unsettled him.

He retuned home thinking of Kell's grim determination and couldn't help but wonder if they were more alike than he was first willing to accept. He wondered if the coming years would uncover more of their similarities, if being Antari meant that somehow, at their cores, they were made of the same thing. Holland wasn't certain he wanted to know and could barely tell which way he hoped it would go.

Instead, the coming months brought something entirely different. Vortalis dying as Holland watched. Astrid and Athos Dane sitting on twin thrones. A seal that sat on Holland's skin but dug far deeper. 

Holland had not stepped foot in Red London since the Danes appeared and he thought Kell would have the self-preservation to read the meaning into that. As Astrid Dane dragged the boy into the throne room by his arm, Holland realised that his opinion of Kell had been too high. He would never make that mistake again. 

The time Holland had spent away from Red London didn't feel long—nothing felt much like anything at all these days—but the smell of Kell and his magic awakened something in Holland's blood that he had forcefully suppressed. _As Travars_. The words rung in his mind, hollow whispers without the richness of blood to make them into something more. How long had it been since he last used blood magic at all? Since he last did anything other than kill those the Danes wanted him to kill, or bleed when Athos wanted him to bleed? 

"He smells like roses," Astrid said, her nose pressed into Kell's hair like she had plucked him from a garden. "I wonder if his blood tastes the same. This boy says he came from another world." 

Kell looked at him then, his lips pressing together into a thin line at whatever he saw in Holland's eyes, or whatever he didn't. Astrid had a blade at his throat, and he still wasted his time being concerned for someone else. It was the kind of disregard that would have had him killed ten times over by now if he was born into this world. If he wasn't careful about it, it could still get him killed now.

"Holland," Kell said, proving that he was smarter than he looked. Just barely. "You know I'm telling the truth. Tell them." 

Athos' gaze turned to him, burning with its cold intensity. "Is that so?" 

"Tell them," Kell repeated.

Before Holland could open his mouth, Athos grabbed his face. Fingers digging into his cheeks, Athos forced Holland to look at him, holding him there for a beat of silence purely to prove that he could, before finally commanding him. "Tell me."

So Holland did. About Red London, about Vortalis' refusal to accept the letter that Kell brought with him the first time. About the magic that thrived a world away from theirs.

Astrid slipped her fingers into Kell's pocket, coming back with a sealed envelope. She held it up with a wicked and victorious smile, and let him go.

"Holland," Athos said, not sharing his sister's mirth. He still held Holland in place, but stroked his cheek this time. "I'll have to punish you for not sharing this information earlier." 

Kell stared, like he couldn't believe that Holland was allowing this. Like he expected Holland would snap at any moment. Like he hoped for it. 

Athos released his hold, turning to face Kell. "We'll send a reply with Holland. Tell your king to expect him." 

Days later, Holland stepped through the doors of the Maresh palace for the first time. 

"This is unnecessary," he told Kell, who walked a step ahead of him. "I could have left the letter with you."

"It didn't look that way to me when I was in White London," Kell said, and Holland felt his hackles rise as they did every time he heard Kell refer to his home as such. At the reminder that while this place lived, the other had been bled dry. "Besides, the king wanted to meet you."

Holland exhaled slowly, pulling the bitterness from his voice like venom from blood, until his voice was neutral as he said, "Another _Antari_. To measure the strength of your world against mine."

Kell almost glanced backwards at him then, his voice so soft that his words didn't sound like they were for Holland at all. "Maybe so."

The royal family waited in a vast room that was empty except for the guards against the walls. They were all wearing armour and holding weapons designed to dampen magic, and Holland knew that it was all for show. If he truly wanted to attack the king here, the only person who stood even a slight chance of stopping him was Kell. 

Holland wasn't interested in spilling the Red royals' blood and neither were Astrid or Athos. He was simply here to gather information, and that was what he did. He watched as Kell straightened uncomfortably in front of the king, greeting him, his wife and his son with the respect of a subject before taking his place by the queen's side. It was just as Holland gathered: Kell was a royal in nothing but name. Here, he held himself differently again to how he did on the streets of this world, or how he held himself in Holland's home. He didn't need the black of his eye to mark him as different to the rest of the royal family, when every single aspect of him did the same. It was as if the king held a warm golden sceptre in one hand and in the other, wielded a cold steel blade. 

Watching the four of them, Holland suspected that the king treated his two sons just so.

"King Athos and Queen Astrid promised a reply to your letter," Holland addressed the king, pulling the letter from his pocket. He half expected Kell to be the one to step forward and take it, but the king did instead, watching Holland closely with every step. As any king would, when trying to decide between ally and foe. 

Holland wondered what Kell had said of the place one world away, after his travels. If he shared any of what he saw at all, or if he kept it to himself the same way Holland heard he liked to do with whatever trinkets he could get his hands on, over at the tavern by the Sijlt. 

The king was still undecided as he let Holland go, Kell escorting him out of the palace. Walking through the streets of Red London with Kell felt entirely different to standing in that large hall. Here, the people looked at them, at their black eyes, with a measure of fear. The king no doubt knew how powerless he would be against Kell, if it ever came down to their magic, but there were other ways of pinning people down. It was a fact Holland would never be able to forget. 

A fact, Holland realised when they next saw each other, that Kell had somehow discovered. 

Bored of the novelty of capturing a boy who came from through a wall, the Danes no longer cared to greet Kell unless he came to them directly. That was yet another task that fell to Holland, waiting for Kell to meander from the Scorched Bone to the castle. London had changed under the Danes. It turned colder and crueller, to match its royals. From the castle, Holland could see Kell's figure as he walked through the streets, his guard entirely up. 

Holland watched as Kell stepped through the gates and, of all things, dropped his guard when they came face to face. 

"I wouldn't," Holland advised, which was when he saw it.

Kell's gaze flicked to the silver clasp that Holland wore, then away again. A hot fury burned through Holland for barely a second, until it petered out into nothing, a flame suffocated of air. 

Holland waited for the questions that never came. Kell didn't meet his eyes, but the downward slope of his shoulders said enough. As if he knew Holland enough to pity him. As if he had any right. 

All of a sudden, Holland felt weary. Kell was exhausting, in the same way that blood magic always took as much out of Holland as it gave. Whether he liked it or not, there was something that drew them together. _Antari_ to _Antari_ , as if the invisible bond between them was a magnet pulling steel to steel, the clash of swords as they scraped and sparked against each other, matched for what they were made of but unequal in the force behind them. The will. For every step that Kell would push forward, Holland could push him backwards by two more. Frustratingly, it never stopped Kell from pushing. He never learned to stop reaching across the distance between them, trying to understand Holland, not understanding that it wouldn't make a difference even if he did. 

"Astrid or Athos?" Holland offered, like a knife with points on both ends. A question that Kell couldn't answer correctly.

This time, when Kell looked at Holland's clasp, he made no effort to hide it.

"Athos."


End file.
